Sunday, August 5, 2012

Guess what I did today?

I bought a lawnmower. My lawn has been untouched for approximately 5 months, and as you can imagine it was looking fairly ordinary. In fact at the back it was around a metre high with weeds in parts...

Anyway, I actually did it. I bought the mower, got it home, got it all set up, got the petrol and oil, put them all in the right bits, read as much of the manual as I could understand, then set to yanking the chain to start it. After about 30 tries I felt defeat waving over me. So I went and had a coffee. I regrouped. And I messaged a few friends to try and work out why it wasn't starting.

Is the throttle in the right place? Um, what is the right place? Is it the rabbit or the turtle?

Is the fuel on? On? What do you mean "on"? I put petrol in the thing, isn't that enough? Hmm. Apparently not.

Well I kept on pulling at the string thing and nothing happened. So I opted to get down to its level and see what it was doing. It was then that I saw there was a cord thingy unattached. As it turns out this was something called a "spark plug" and apparently fairly important in the starting, and continuing operation, of a lawnmower. And what do you know? It literally roared into life!!!

And so an hour or two later, I had mowed the median strip, the front yard, the back yard and the side yard. And that was less time that it had taken me to get the thing running in the first place.

But I did it. And now I have lawn again. I will of course have to mow several more times in order to get it to the level of "good" but for now "good enough" is indeed good enough.

And I am so proud of myself for doing it. By myself (albeit with the help of some very handy advice from friends, in the purchasing department, and subsequent operation).

Tick another thing in the list of things I never thought I would be able to do. Done.

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